An old-fashioned teacher holding a ruler, is giving a pupil the time-honoured back-to-school writing assignment: 'What I did this summer'. The boy, who is playing with his mobile phone, tells her, "If you followed me on Twitter, you'd know." See here for a very similar cartoon from 2013.

GRAMMARThe cartoon features a nice example of the second conditional, which is used to talk about ‘unreal’ or impossible things. Note that 'you'd' is a contraction of 'you would'.

• If I won a lot of money I’d buy a big house in the country.• Where would you live if you could live anywhere in the world?• If you didn’t smoke so much you’d feel a lot better.

The structure is usually if + past simple and would + infinitive. It’s not important which clause comes first.

An old-fashioned teacher holding a ruler, is giving a pupil the time-honoured back-to-school writing assignment: 'What I did this summer'. The boy, who is playing with his mobile phone, tells her, "If you followed me on Twitter, you'd know." See here for a very similar cartoon from 2013.

GRAMMARThe cartoon features a nice example of the second conditional, which is used to talk about ‘unreal’ or impossible things. Note that 'you'd' is a contraction of 'you would'.

• If I won a lot of money I’d buy a big house in the country.• Where would you live if you could live anywhere in the world?• If you didn’t smoke so much you’d feel a lot better.

The structure is usually if + past simple and would + infinitive. It’s not important which clause comes first.